I got a tip from a company called French Paper. They alerted me to their beutiful wood prints that they make, but I’m enamoured with their Doo the Dishes collection of sexy silhouettes printed on plates and backed by a touch of baroque sensibility. It’s rare that I’ve fantisized about a silhouette much less plateware, however, when I gaze upon the melamine surfaced plate’s perfectly upturned nose and pouty lips I can only daydream of more.

French Paper

Handpresso, available at Charles and Marie, is your ticket to never being stuck on a back country hiking trail without a good shot of espresso easily available. I used to carry something called a Jetboil. My friends raved about this thing, so I had to have one. And as it promises, the Jetboil boils water in seconds. Here’s the catch. The Jetboil comes with a coffee adapter to make French press style coffee, but the device led to a scalded hand and lots of grounds in my cup of coffee. Admittedly, I didn’t use the press quite right when I got the hand scald, but it has never worked quite well for coffee when I did use it right. Now, my savior comes in, and its name is Handpresso. This plus the Jetboil is the one-two punch for the camping barrista.

Perch, a furniture concept by Simon Dennehy, is one of those aha! ideas that you wonder why you have not seen this concept sooner. The Perch system is comprised of a table and a chair that have been expertly contoured to meet a massively lacking area of furniture design. There is an endless host of useful features in this concept:

• The seat flexes to encourage leg movement
• The frames of the chairs are not only light and simple to operate but also stackable
• The desk is the centerpiece of a clip on shelf system that could accompany a student from desk to desk
• The desk and seat are adjusted with a very simple and easy to use mechanism

Quite frankly, this system makes me wonder really how much school children really matter. I remember when I was in school, my back and butt hurting nearly every day from sitting in the ubiquitous awful school chair. Yet, Mr. Dennehy’s concept, although brilliantly simple, should have been implemented much, much sooner than 2008.

Milan has an extremely intricate pattern that makes up its central city. Roads thousand of years old crisscross with modern freeways and light rail tracks. Now you will always be reminded of walking those crooked side streets by whacking a couple of flies.

I was eating an everlasting gobbstopper today. Maybe you remember this candy? It is a candy that has a beautiful, shiny candy coating and within the coating are the multicolored strata of candy goodness. I’m not sure why, exactly, but the Waldo/45 table by James Burleigh when I saw it immediately transported me to 9am this morning when the sweet slickness of the gobbstopper rolled back and forth over my tongue. This piece of furniture just begs me to break a piece off and eat it for dessert.

Zoe Mowat has come up with something I find quite special. Her Circumflex accent chair is a perfect triumvirate of steel, cast plastic, and walnut which creates something that is forward thinking and yet retains an old-world richness. Usually, when I see chairs like this they’re either too clumsy or look like a robot made the chair, but this chair is just right. I can’t wait to actually sit in this chair, though. I see this as a very good restaurant chair except that your back may be a bit fatigued after two hours of dining. Maybe the best use of the chair is somewhere where design is paramount but sitting around should be no longer than a few minutes.